The Dying Swan (originally The Swan) is a ballet choreographed by Mikhail Fokine in 1905 to Camille Saint-Saëns's cello solo Le Cygne from Le Carnaval des Animaux as a pièce d'occasion for the ballerina Anna Pavlova.The short ballet follows the last moments in the life of a swan, and was first presented in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1905. Inspired by swans that Anna Pavlova had seen in public parks and Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "The Dying Swan", Anna Pavlova asked Michel Fokine, who had also read the poem, to create a solo ballet for her for a 1905 concert being given by artists from the chorus of the Imperial Mariinsky Opera.
